Naoki Maeda

Artist Information

Profile

Naoki Maeda is a Japanese composer and arranger from Toyonaka, Osaka. After graduating from the Osaka University of Arts in music (piano), Naoki joined KONAMI AM (Amusement Machine) Division in 1995. He served as composer and sound producer of TwinBee Yahoo! Fushigi no kuni de ouabare!! (ツインビーヤッホー! ふしぎの国で大あばれ!!) in 1995 and SALAMANDER 2 (沙羅曼蛇2) in 1996 under his エンゾニック前田 (Ensoniq Maeda) alias. Naoki was recruited by Yoshihiko Ota, a game producer at KCET to work as a composer on a brand new music game called DanceDanceRevolution in early 1998. Following the success of the first release, he became the sound producer of DanceDanceRevolution 2ndMIX, a role he kept until DanceDanceRevolution X. Naoki was also involved in the short-lived spin-off DanceDanceRevolution Solo from 1999 to 2000 as a composer.

Outside of the DanceDanceRevolution series, Naoki contributed tracks to other BEMANI series as well, such as beatmania, Dance Maniax, beatmania IIDX, pop'n music, GuitarFreaks and DrumMania, jubeat and REFLEC BEAT.

In 2001, Naoki formed the J-POP group BeForU with the four winners of the DanceDanceRevolution 5thMIX アーティストオーディション (Artist Audition) 2001. He was the main producer for the first three albums of the band and on Riyu Kosaka's first album, begin. In 2002, Naoki created TËЯRA with jun.

By 2009, Naoki became more involved with the console releases of DanceDanceRevolution as a producer. Naoki also produced the original Xbox 360 game DanceMasters (known as DanceEvolution in Japan). He was also involved in its subsequent arcade release as DanceEvolution ARCADE in 2012.

In the beginning of 2013, Naoki left KONAMI to later join CAPCOM that same year. Following his departure, KONAMI removed nearly all pictures or videos of him from BEMANI games. His last, playable songs for BEMANI were Everything I Need and You for the 2013 DanceDanceRevolution arcade game. Since he left, Naoki has served as the producer of a mobile music game named CROSS×BEATS (2013) and its arcade release crossbeats REV. (2015), both published by CAPCOM.

NAOKI will appear as one of the artists for SEGA's new music game, オンゲキ (O.N.G.E.K.I.).

Two of NAOKI's favorite music genres are ballads and R&B, as noted in the song comments for Remember You.

According to an interview with bemanistyle in 2010, Naoki's favorite DanceDanceRevolution title is 4thMIX, as he felt it was the one where he was able to express his musical style the best.

According to an interview Naoki did with Tatsh (as seen here - expand the second set of questions), finite budgets for the early DanceDanceRevolution games is why a lot of his earlier songs for the series used vocal samples. Naoki would finally get to record songs with newly sung vocals in the main series in DanceDanceRevolution 3rdMIX.